Editor's Note

The Charge

Opening Statement

In 2003, journalist Evan Wright tagged along with one company of recon
Marines who formed "the tip of the spear" in America's initial
invasion of Iraq. Adapting Wright's book on the experience, Generation
Kill, celebrated journalist-turned-TV-writer David Simon follows up his
intensely acclaimed The Wire with this seven-part HBO miniseries. But can
he depict America's war on terror as ably as he did America's war on drugs?

*Note: Images are taken from the standard DVD release and are not
representative of Blu-Ray picture quality.

Facts of the Case

Generation Kill takes us inside the thin-skinned Humvees of these
recon Marines during their few weeks of invasion action, detailing what
transpires between their departure from Camp Mathilda in Kuwait and their
arrival in freshly occupied Baghdad. We share Wright's (Lee Tergesen, Oz)
outsider perspective as he comes to know the individual troops alongside whom he
risks his life. There are far too many characters to single out here, but the
men he (and we) becomes best acquainted with are those whose Humvee he rides in:
stoic and principled Sgt. Brad "Iceman" Colbert (Alexander
Skarsgård, True Blood), loud-mouthed goofball Cpl. Josh Ray Person
(James Ransone, The Wire), and a rookie simmering with violence, Lance
Cpl. Harold James Trombley (Billy Lush, The Black Donnellys). Ambushes,
humanitarian situations, and lots of screw-ups from commanding officers are
sprinkled throughout their journey, but the bulk of their time is spent teasing
each other in the Humvees or goofing around in temporary camps while waiting for
orders or an attack—whichever arrives first.

The seven parts of this miniseries—each a little over an hour
long—are split among three discs, with non-commentary special features on
disc three:

Disc Three • "Bomb in the Garden" (with
commentary by David Simon, George Faber)

The Evidence

In the many calls David Simon and his collaborators have to make between
favoring "reality" or favoring fiction on a project like Generation
Kill, they seem to side with reality almost every time. They make that call
in the way they write their teleplays, in the way they choose settings or
procure props and costumes, and especially in the way they pace their stories
and their near-total ban on non-diegetic music (music outside the world of the
characters that only the viewer can hear, like a score or a montage song).
Simon's tenacious commitment to realism is often commendable, most of all
because he's depicting difficult and important events from the real world. This
realist immersion made The Wire a true rarity on television: a
fascinating, heartbreaking show that had the guts to expose the corruption,
hypocrisy, futility and even the bureaucratic boredom of America's war on drugs,
in Baltimore. The Wire was unlike every other action-packed,
solve-the-case cop show on TV that cared more about entertaining fiction than
realism. Watching The Wire, by contrast, felt like taking a sociology
course in many ways, and yet it was totally compelling for almost all of its
five-season run. With Generation Kill, Simon applies the same principles
of journalistic realism and he even treats many of the same themes: corruption,
hypocrisy, futility, and bureaucratic boredom. Unfortunately, this approach
seems to make Generation Kill sputter and stall, not to energize the
story like it did for The Wire. While interesting and informative, this
series doesn't capture the strange, unexpected magic we're now primed to expect
from David Simon.

Part of the problem is the pacing, which definitely favors reality more so
than the needs of good fiction. Simon and co. clearly want to immerse us in the
tedium of life as a real Marine rather than offer the
explosion-every-five-minutes structure of typical war movies. That desire puts
them up against the eternal writing problem, how do you fully convey boredom
without boring your audience? Perhaps the answer is that you can't. If so, David
Simon chose boredom over entertainment for this series, which might be edifying
for those of us watching but isn't pleasant. It's especially unpleasant when
sustained for over seven hours, which I personally found to be an awkward length
for this project. It gives us time to attempt to get to know the many
characters, but it also gives us time to get tired of the premise and tone.
Generation Kill may have been tighter and more effective at about half
this length and with about half this many characters.

Along with pacing, character was the other major weak point for me. Though
I'm aware that each one of these guys represents a real Marine, the field of
faces is just too crowded to absorb them all in any meaningful way. The writers
seem to want us to discover the strengths and flaws of each individual, to
gradually see them as complex and fascinating people. However, because they try
to give significant character moments to so many soldiers, they all seem
to get diluted until very few characters really stand out for the
viewer—or at least for this viewer. No one in this crowd captured my
attention the way that Omar, Kima, Bubbles, Bunk, or Freamon did on The
Wire. As much as I hate to say it, especially because they're based on real
people, I doubt that I'd remember anything about more than one or two of these
characters if asked about them a year from now, and in this case I'd call that a
mark of weak writing.

My last criticism is really more a warning for viewers than censure for the
series' creators: Generation Kill's realism definitely includes a very
raw and relentless depiction of the racism, sexism, and homophobia that these
Marines incessantly spew. The citizens they encounter are referred to as Hajjis
much more often than Iraqis and many of the Marines show a lot of hate and
hostility for the country's people as a whole. Though there are very few women
on screen at all, the troops burst into a ferocious chorus of harassment of (and
insults against) the one American woman they encounter during their
journey—a female soldier on a supply truck that's stopped at their camp.
For better or worse, most of them seem too racist to sexually harass the Iraqi
women they meet. On the homophobia front, it's a full eight minutes into the 470
minutes of this series before we hear the word "faggot," but the guys
make up for this delay in full during the rest of the running time. At least
there's a knowing joke about this topic, when one of them remarks, "Man, we
Marines are so homoerotic. You ever realize how homoerotic this whole thing
is?" I certainly don't mean to imply that the writers should have omitted
this aspect of Marine life. If anything, it's brave for them to exhibit these
alarming attitudes and then ask us to sympathize with the men who hold them. But
if you're a kind, respectful civilian who isn't full of hate for any particular
group of people, this Marine company feels like a pretty hostile social
environment to spend more than seven hours. It's just not an experience that
will appeal to all viewers, and it was certainly grating for me to endure.

Despite all my above complaints, Generation Kill does do a lot of
things right and watching it will undoubtedly teach you something valuable about
this war and about military life. The series brilliantly illuminates many of the
horrors of war, both specific and eternal. When civilians get killed, some of
the men are haunted by the guilt of hurting the people they think they're
liberating, or by uncertainty about whether those killed were enemies or
bystanders. Even when the Marines go out of their way to devise strategies for
preserving Iraqi lives, their futile plans often backfire, as when a smoke
grenade fired as a warning for an oncoming vehicle bounces off the pavement and
fatally strikes an old Iraqi man in the back of the head. Every positive step
with the civilian population seems to be followed by two steps back. Though
these Marines are mentally tough as well as physically, we also see PTSD getting
its roots into some of them—most prominently the paranoid officer
nicknamed Captain America (Eric Nenninger, Malcolm in the Middle).
Erupting vocally in fear at every confrontation with the enemy and mistreating
peaceful Iraqi prisoners, he's clearly someone who has not survived this war
unscathed. Yet for all his bumbling and mental instability, he surprises us with
a persuasive reality check in "Stay Frosty": "To remain calm and
stay in a place you think you will die—that, too, is the definition of
insane. You have to become insane to survive in combat."

It's not just this one statement that makes us question the psychological
health of these Marines or question the wisdom of the whole 21st century
military culture they've been immersed in. The title of the series prompts us to
question it all along, and many of the plot points and lines of dialogue
emphasize the military's intention to turn these men into cold-blooded killing
machines. Almost universally, these men want to "get some"—want
to kill. An offhand conversation in "Get Some" finds two Marines
chatting about how cool it would have been to fly the planes that dropped atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII: "Couple of dudes killed
hundreds of thousands. That fuckin' rules." They all delight at rolling
past enemy corpses, and everyone gets upset when a couple of trucks full of
armed Iraqis turn back at their roadblock instead of proceeding to the
slaughter. Sgt. Espera muses thoughtfully about this culture of killing near the
end of the series: "My priest told me it's not a sin to kill if you don't
enjoy killing. My question is, is indifference the same as enjoyment?"

Also, David Simon's (and perhaps Evan Wright's) perceptive cynicism about
bureaucracy in all its forms allows the series to get in a lot of important jabs
at the American military and how they treat their soldiers. We see higher-ups
put their men in danger to pursue glory and medals, as when an officer orders
the troops to abandon a supply truck full of their food and ammunition when
stopping to change the flat tire might make them miss out on some action ahead,
or when another officer calls in an air strike on a target dangerously close to
the company's own position just to look "aggressive" to his commanding
officer. Though the commanding officers obsessively enforce the company's
grooming standards—spending much time on policing facial hair—they
don't seem very concerned that their soldiers are being deployed without many
basic supplies and with malfunctioning equipment. One Marine complains while
trying to patch up a busted Humvee that "This is like Gilligan's
Island, man. They're givin' us rocks and coconuts to make radios out
of." Another cynically analyzes the supply problem by saying, "If
marines could get what they need when they needed it, we would be happy and we
wouldn't be ready to kill people all the time." These critiques of military
priorities and lack of concern for the men on the ground made me really angry on
the troops' behalf and very effectively brought home the real-world consequences
of these stories we hear about impersonally in the news. Consequently, I found
these moments to be some of the best in the series.

On an audiovisual level, Generation Kill is impeccably produced, with
only a few blemishes in its Blu-ray presentation. Despite being shot in Africa
rather than Iraq and having to computer generate many of its helicopters, tanks,
and Humvees, the series feels completely real to they eyes and ears. Visually,
it achieves an appropriately gritty look that still maintains sharp lines and a
surprisingly vibrant color palette. The DTS-HD Master Audio track offered
exclusively on this Blu-ray edition is a joy to listen to. Fully immersive in
its construction, it surrounds the viewer with the ambient noise of a war zone:
shots fired from different kinds of weapons, vehicle motors, explosions, and, of
course, irreverent soldier chatter. I was especially impressed with how detailed
the sound effects were in terms of direction, distance, and tone. I did notice
significant problems with the black levels on many of the dead-of-night patrol
scenes. A lot of these look grainy and washed out, and the Blu-ray version does
little to improve upon the standard DVD's quality here. Elsewhere, though,
upgrades in the visuals are noticeable on this Blu-ray edition, with a generally
crisper picture and more striking colors.

The generous package of special features included with this set is much the
same as that of the standard DVD, with one important addition: a glossary of
terms, chain of command chart, and updating mission map that you can access
directly while you watch the miniseries (just by using the directional buttons
on your remote). A feature that would have been impossible for a standard DVD,
this Blu-ray exclusive is immensely helpful and fun in the context of
Generation Kill, which plops you down in the middle of this company
without coaching you on their lingo, who all the characters are, or who's in
charge of whom. I found myself frequently looking up terms. A couple of examples
of what you can learn from these references: "Whiskey Tango" is an
insult that means "White Trash" using the military's
first-letter-matches code words, and taking over an "MSR" means
capturing a "main supply route." The chain of command menus also offer
handy cheat sheets for the series' many characters, with many of them listed
with nicknames, pictures, ranks, and placement within the company. If you want
to follow the plot of Generation Kill and you've never been in the
military, you'll be pushing those directional keys often and be glad of this
worthwhile feature.

The other extras are transplants from the original DVD release, but are
pretty high-quality. Six episodes commentaries with various cast and crew
(listed above with the episode titles) provide a comprehensive insider's look at
the series. As with any large selection of commentaries (which are becoming
increasingly common on television releases, it seems), only die-hard fans will
want to listen to all six all the way through. If you're wanting to give one or
two a try, the commentaries on parts one, two and seven provide your usual
writer/director/producer perspective on the production, with details about
things like location scouting, the budget, special effects, and scripting. Even
though I found Simon to be a riveting in-person speaker when he visited UC
Berkeley last year, I found his tracks and the one on part two a little humdrum
after a while. Commentaries on parts three and five focus more on how the series
matches up with the on-the-ground reality the Marines and Wright experienced,
which I found more interesting, especially in part five's installment. It's
fascinating, for example, to hear those who were present debate what really
happened on the day an air strike was called in on a village that appeared to
Bravo Company to only contain women and children. Commentary on part four is the
comic relief, with the unsurprisingly animated James Ransone lightening the tone
considerably. The 23-minute discussion with the real Marines of the story,
moderated by Evan Wright, is worth watching, mostly for the fun of comparing the
real guys to the ones who played them (except in the case of quirky Rudy Reyes,
who played himself). The real Sgt. Espera is just as quotable here as he was in
Iraq, too, with insightful comments like this one: "If you ride with the
tip of the spear, you're gonna see civilians get killed…They train us to
be fuckin' killers. And then grandma reads it and she's all upset, 'what
happened to my boy scout Marine?'" The 25-minute making-of documentary is
succinct and illuminating, with lots of interesting info about shooting the
production in Africa and nice interview snippets with cast and crew. Tergeson
voices a perceptive genre comparison that seemed to float around the production:
"It's a road trip movie, basically. It's like a bunch of guys hittin' the
road, stopping for food, stopping to sleep. But instead of fixing flats, there's
ambushes." I got less from actor Eric Ladin's 30-minute video
diary—which felt a bit too much like a wistful home movie of someone
else's summer camp experience—and from the handful of three-minute deleted
dialogues.

Closing Statement

An awkward fit for its seven-hour timeslot, Generation Kill is an
awkward fit in other ways, too: it'll be too much talk and not enough action for
war movie aficionados, and its hyperactive efforts to remain politically neutral
may frustrate those who want hard-hitting commentary on the war in question. But
it's impossible to doubt its realism or its earnest attempt to illuminate the
duties and lives of U.S. Marines during this invasion. If you haven't already
been versed in "what it's really like" for the U.S. military in Iraq
by one of the very good documentaries on the subject (The Ground Truth,
The War Tapes), Generation Kill is
well worth your time. Plus, with its stunning sound quality and invaluable
glossary and chain of command reference features, this Blu-ray edition is
definitely best the way to experience it.

The Verdict

Generation Kill believes that guilt is hard to judge in combat. The
same holds true for this vaguely underwhelming series.